battlemage orbit

Just a quick round up to say I had a fantastic couple of launch events in Birmingham and London last week to celebrate the publication of Mageborn.

In Birmingham, RJ Barker and I were quizzed by Tom Bissell about magic, writing, our influences, and all the while we and the audience enjoyed a nice glass of MAGE real ale brewed by Fownes Brewery with help from myself. Below are some photos from the evening’s entertainment, which also included a brief game of Bluff my Call (not related in any way to a TV show that had a similar name).

RJ Barker and Stephen Aryan

RJ Barker performs

Tom Bissell, Stephen Aryan and RJ Barker

MAGE ale from Fownes Brewery

Mageborn and MAGE ale from Fownes Brewery

Bottles of MAGE ale

In London I sat down with Ed Cox to have a more intimate one on one chat covering a wide range of topics ranging from our origins, the place where we write every, our parents, influences, world building, magic and exciting books we were looking forward to seeing in the coming months. It was a lot of fun to dig into each other’s origin story and to chat to some new people afterwards.

Ed Cox and Stephen Aryan

Ed intently explains something

Stephen performs a magic spell by waving his hand while Ed looks unconvinced

On Tuesday 7th June, Joe Hill will be appearing at Waterstones in Birmingham, and I’m attending as a fan to hear about his latest book, The Fireman. It sounds really, really, really good, so I am looking forward to getting my hands on a copy of that. Plus he is always a very engaging speaker at events and I like hearing about his unique perspective on storytelling, given his family.

On Wednesday 8th June, from 6pm to 8pm, I’m going back to Waterstones in Birmingham and this time I’m one of three local authors who will be taking part in a Publishing Workshop. All three of us, Liz Tipping, Gemma Todd and I, will be speaking about how we found a literary agent. We all have very different origin stories and our books are also very different, so it should prove to be an interesting and useful event. If you are trying to get published and want to find an agent, come along with your questions.

If this event goes well and is well attended, we are looking to do more of these events in the future.

Then on Saturday 11th June I will be at a local author event and coffee morning in Lichfield at the Library. I’ll be there to talk about my books, writing and just generally get people interested in reading and writing. Libraries are vitally important and I spent a lot of time in my home town library growing up. So if you are in the area, come and have a cup of coffee and a chat.

Quick general update. This month has been flying by. It’s been super busy in the day job, and I’ve been stacked up at night with various things. Probably the most exciting news is that the proof of Battlemage is done! I spotted a few things, had a few more fed back to me from the publisher and I’ve sent back my comments on them. So that’s it. I’m done. That’s a wrap!

There are some tweaks to be made to the cover, but that’s not up to me and I’ve already sent in my comments. So now book 1 is completely finished for me (there’s still the whole printing and binding thing, but it’s probably not a good idea for me to do that!) and the next time I see it, Battlemage the book will be a thing. A physical artefact that I can hold in my hand. The final sum total of years of work by many people. It’s very scary and also the prospect of seeing the book is one of the most exciting things in my life. It is literally a dream come true.

So now I’m trying to get my head back into book 2, then send that off and I will hopefully have a gap of a few months to sink back into book 3 and make some good progress.

Other stuff, episode 169 of the Comic Book Outsiders podcast is out now which I co-host. We talk about some of the latest geek news, and then in terms of comics we revisit The Fuse, Letter 44 and Southern Bastards. Also episode 18 of Bags of Action is out, part 3 of our trilogy to Arnie and we discuss Predator, a classic film of the late eighties.

The newest comic book project I’ve been working on, and actually the one I can say the least about, is proving to be the most exciting and it is racing ahead. It’s proving to be both incredibly challenging and also very rewarding because of it’s unusual nature and the approach. Hopefully I can share some more details about this soon.

So, in the meantime, it’s back to work on the second draft of book 2, enjoying the current mid-season break of TV shows as I have less to distract me. In April it all kicks off with Eastercon, Dyprosium, Avengers 2: Age of Ultron, and a bucket load of new Marvel Lego to go with it. Lots of awesome stuff to look forward to.